Tulsa Landmarks Honoring Ku Klux Klan Member May Be Renamed

TULSA, Okla. — When Wyatt Tate Brady arrived here in 1890, Tulsa was just a spit of a town – an untidy tangle of dirt streets and a handful of tents occupied by white men seeking their fortune in uncharted Indian lands.

A shoe salesman by trade, the brash and ambitious Missourian saw an opportunity and seized it. He opened a general store, followed by a hotel – the first with baths.

By the time Oklahoma became a state in 1907, Brady was a celebrated city father. He signed Tulsa’s incorporation papers, started a newspaper and chartered a train filled with boosters, including humorist Will Rogers, to promote the new boomtown to people in the East.

But a lesser-known side of Brady has become the focus of debate in his adopted hometown nearly 90 years after his death. The son of a Confederate veteran, Brady was a member of the local Ku Klux Klan. And new questions have emerged about his involvement in the most notorious event in Tulsa history, a 1921 race riot that left 300 black residents dead.

The issue is especially sensitive because Brady’s name is all over town – on a street, a mansion, a theater and a historic neighborhood. It’s also the name of the city’s most ambitious development effort in a generation – a glitzy downtown entertainment district.

“There are councilors who are concerned and ashamed that we have this name, and we know what Mr. Brady stood for,” said Jack Henderson, the council’s lone black member who plans to introduce a law Thursday to rename Brady Street as Burlington Street.

Blacks account for roughly 16 percent of the city’s population of 400,000.

Henderson’s proposal reflects a recently discovered 1907 document on which someone crossed out Burlington Street and wrote Brady Street in its place.

The downtown area is “growing like it’s never grown before,” Henderson said in an interview. “So changing the name of the street isn’t going to stop the momentum.”

Business owners have also protested that changing the name of the street would confuse visitors and hurt sales, among other concerns.